Social Media in User Workflow: Cision Zooms in on Influential Contacts
Jinfo Blog

By Chris Porter

Abstract

Chris Porter looks at how the CisionPoint software from Cision helps its PR-professional users to zoom in on the social media content that is most relevant to their particular job role.

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FreePint is currently taking a look some of the enterprise-focused social media monitoring and management tools available in today's market.

A strong theme has been emerging: social media throws up many different challenges within large organisations, and increasingly, vendors are developing very specific functionality to meet the needs of individual user groups.

Relationship Building

Cision is a case in point. The company is one of the world's largest providers of software services for public relations and communications professionals.

A decade ago, PR professionals may have spent much of their time developing relationships with journalists in the world of traditional media.

They would have used tools such as the Bacon's journalist contact database to figure out which journalists had been writing about their key topics of interest, and which of those might be the most influential, based on indicators such as the region of the publication, its target audience or its circulation figures - all of which are data elements which the Bacon's database could provide (Bacon's rebranded under the Cision name in 2007).

Identifying Key Influencers

Now, those same PR professionals also need to know who is writing about their key topics right now, on social media channels. They want to zoom in on the bloggers, tweeters or posters who have the most influence, based on indicators such as the type and size of audience or the level of engagement the commentators have with their audience.

Cision's flagship CisionPoint software platform meets these needs too. It still covers traditional journalists; it adds details of their social media profile; it adds profiles of new social media commentators; and it combines all this information with a handy "social influencer" search.

The CisionPoint user simply enters keywords on their topic of interest and the system then searches across a repository of recent Twitter content from the key "influencers" - whether traditional journalists or social media commentators - who have a profile in the Cision database.

The example below shows results for a search for potential key influencers on the topic of satellite navigation systems.

Figure 1: key influencers

The results are linked to the contact profiles in the database. The profiles are scored with a proprietary Cision Influence Rating based on datapoints such as numbers of followers or retweets, but also online mainstream media indicators such as number of articles on a topic.

Results are sorted to show contacts with the highest influence rating at the top. In the huge babble of social media voices, the CisionPoint user can quickly pick out the most useful ones.

Editor's Note:

Mini Review of CisionPoint
This is just a taster of the social media capabilities within CisionPoint. Read Mini Review of CisionPoint: Social Media Capabilities to find out more.

Social Media Monitoring Tools
Read Chris Porter's introduction to FreePint's focus on social media monitoring tools, which ran during March and April 2014, in Social Media Monitoring: the Options.

Beyond Aggregation
FreePint readers may be interested to read more about news products in our FreePint Topic Series: Beyond Aggregation, which ran from October to November 2013. You can still register your interest to receive a free copy of the FreePint Report: Buyer's Guide on News Content published in early December.

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